Greetings From San Jose

Hello Everyone,

Elder Miller here reporting on a pretty good week. Let's see what have we been up to. In my new area there is a great guy who is waiting to put his mission papers in so we drag him along with us to appointments all the time and he is fun to have around. He has a strange way of speaking where he laughs as he talks sometimes and so it's pretty fun to talk to him. We took him along with us to visit a lady that hasn't been a member too long but struggles coming to church. The best part about going to this ladies house is her elderly mother who I think suffers from dementia and so never really remembers who we are unfortunately but she is really very nice and always compliments our smiles and our attire, "Well would you look at those fine smiles, you are some handsome nice young men!" She always make us feel good about ourselves so we like visiting there. Unfortunately it is the mother and her need for constant care and attention that causes our less active member to miss church. She came last week but when we visited with her she said that she almost didn't because she felt the influence of the adversary very intensely and the problem that arose was that her mother had lost her dentures and so she had to search everywhere for them and would have missed church but she eventually found them in the trash can wrapped up in a napkin. I thought the story kind of amusing but serious of course at the same time but then the guy that we brought with us said, "Oh, yeah I did the exact same thing with my retainer one time, you got to be careful about wrapping them in nakins." So then I felt free to laugh at the situation. If I had ever had braces and retainers then I'm sure I would probably have done the same thing.

The family that we were most excited about cause they really had the desire to be baptized flaked out on a lesson that we scheduled along with a dinner at the bishops house. Our investigators' sister is a member of our ward and is the families primary fellowshipper and they were supposed to be at the dinner as well but they apparently had a disagreement over some plane tickets to Hawaii and so that made neither family come to dinner and the lesson. But we were able to provide some fun service at the Bishops house. He was trying to install a rope swing for his kids and got the rope completely tangled and stuck in the high tree branches. So using a variety of methods we eventually got the rope down. My companion had an erector set type thing of pvc pipes and that knocked the rope mostly loose and then I threw a smaller rope with a baseball tied to the end through a loop in the bigger rope swing rope and pulled it down. Then we tied it in place and my companion tested it for safetys' sake before we could okay it for the kids. Anyway, back to family, as sad as it sounds we are now trying to isolate our investigators church experience from her sister and kind of transplant in new fellowshippers.

Then we are teaching a Vietnam Vet who is a little kooky and gruff but wants to be baptized. Word of Wisdom is going to be his biggest challenge. He drinks in place of part of his prescribed pain killers cause he doesn't like how they affect him.

That's about all that is going on here. Hope everyone has a wonderful week and enjoyed Father's day. I got a candy bar at church cause they had extras after they gave them out to all the Fathers, and it was pretty fantastic.

Sincerely, Elder Miller